Red Dust
by Puckk
Summary: Sylar dreams in shades of Sepia burnished mahogany and gold combining to create a landscape that looks so real and feels so distant. When he wakes up in silence the colour seeps back in to his vision. But he never forgets. [MohinderSylar]


_Red Dust_

When Sylar dreams, he dreams in shades of sepia- burnished mahogany and gold combining to create a landscape that looks so real and feels so distant.

He can feel the desert in his bones, chipping away at his pale skin and caressing his face violently. He can taste the heat under his tongue and the grit in his eyes as his hands wander away from the steering wheel. He can see the sun rise and fall as he drives in complete ignorance of the natural cycle of day and night because the day never fades and the night never darkens. He can hear the whisper of so many grains of sand collecting on his tires and scratching along the side of his car in ever-growing waves. He can smell the gasoline of his vehicle, the musk of his own sweat, the subtle hint of blood and rotting peeking out from under the heavy air that threatens to drown him even though the windows are wide open.

When Sylar dreams, he dreams in sepia. But everything is _so real _that he doesn't try to wake up. There'd be no point in it. He knows he's not precognitive, he hasn't freed that power yet, but nonetheless he can't help but believe that when he dreams, he's seeing a highly likely rendering of his future.

When he wakes up to silence, the colour seeps back in to his vision.

But he never forgets.

X

"Where are we going today?"

Mohinder's voice is muted and Sylar takes a moment to pull back into his mind, turn up his hearing, and smile as he raises his eyebrows in question.

"Hm? What was that?" He asks, even though he had heard him well enough to make out the words. There was something about Mohinder's voice, sweet milk over gravel, trickling through the crevices and bubbling over top, which pleased him. Mohinder is very pleasing to him.

The sun is at its peak in his peripheral vision, blazing beige, casting no direct light.

Mohinder smiles wryly and rolls his eyes. There is sweat glistening along his hairline, his upper lip, down his collarbone and... mmm. He doesn't mean to miss what Mohinder says the second time around, but he does, and although Mohinder looks patiently amused, he can sense a little frustration seeping in around the edges.

"I'm sorry; you know I can't stop looking at you. You're so ... beautiful."

Sylar smiles as Mohinder blushes, the reaction he'd been going for all along. The blush made his skin look perfect, reddish highlights peeking out from behind a dark tan, and Sylar can't help the pull he feels. How _right _they are together. He knows Mohinder must know it too.

"Where are we going today?" He questions, feeling that old anxious rush; that _I need this **now **_feeling that he can never quite get rid of, never quite ignore. Mohinder is silent but smiling a queer sort of smile, looking away from Sylar, looking at the sun that is suddenly rolling along beside the car.

The world tilts and Sylar is suddenly confronting Mohinder outside of the car, shaking him cruelly and trying to force the answer out of him. As if Sylar shaking him hard enough would cause the truth to simply evaporate out of him, condense and solidify into something satisfactory so that he has something _real _that he can feel and acknowledge and _know_. He hates not knowing, hates having no control, hates

hateshates_hatehates**hates**_

He's screaming and screaming and blood is coming from Mohinder's head, coming from a seam along his hairline. Sylar watches, fascinated and _so fucking **angry **_as the curls become saturated with blood, as the scarlet liquid trails down from his hair, curling behind his ear to slip off his shoulder and disappear into nothing.

Slip off his shoulder like Mohinder's shirt has slipped off his body, the shirt that is untouched in Sylar's hands. He looks down and when he looks back up, Mohinder is lying naked on the ground, pale and unblinking. His eyes are glazed with cataracts but he still smiles, still laughs hollowly.

The sand around them turns as red the apple he threw at his father when he was twelve and the man implied that Sylar would never be anything unless he grew some balls, red as the blood that appeared after the apple had crashed to the ground, red as the rage he felt at every fucking thing his father ever told him. He was _something _and damnit, _somebody_ was going to notice.

Somebody already had. Has.

He kneels over Mohinder's body without realizing it, gets close enough to his face to examine his eyes. Ends up laughing and laughing. It's all so hilarious he can't hold it in, so he settles on Mohinder's stomach and thinks of broken tea cups, IV's, and all the things people try to do to him that will never work.

So fucking hilarious.

Abruptly he stops and returns to examining Mohinder, Mohinder whose eyes have cleared like the breaking of clouds across the sky. He whispers one word, rough with disgust, over and over in a mantra that resonates impossibly, echoing in his eyes.

_"Sinner"_

In Mohinder's eyes he sees Eden. He sees her panic as she stared at him through her bloody eyelashes; her resignation, determination, how terrified she was as she turned that gun to her head.

In them he sees Zane, stupid Zane. He sees Chandra, his reflection in the glass of the window, Dale and so many other nameless inferior people.

In those eyes he sees fear and blood. _Desperation. _He kisses Mohinder's eyes with a smirk on his face; grasps slick curls that bleed all over his palm, down his wrist, and draws the fingertips of his other hand along one smooth cheekbone, digging in with dirty nails. He pulls close and breathes in Mohinder's scent, the scent of fear and blood and submission.

He pulls away sharply.

He didn't want this.

Did he want this?

As Mohinder's head drops, he realizes he himself has been chanting the word. Is that what he is? Is that what this is? He just wanted to be special. He is special now- but he could be more. How can he stop now?

He can't. He can never stop. Not anymore.

In a panic he awakens.

X

He never forgets. Never forgets the dream or the panic.

He never remembers the last part.

Deep in his unconscious he feels the heaviness of sin; it weighs on his bones and hums as an undercurrent through his thoughts even though he can never pick it out.

The taste of the desert lingers in his mouth.


End file.
